Whanganui fine arts students bring out their best for Interstice

Misty Tutaki (left) and Anita Hohaia with their works on show at the Whanganui Community Arts Centre gallery. Photo / Bevan Conley

Whanganui fine arts students are exhibiting their work across two galleries this week.

Interstice - the intervening space, showing at Edith Gallery and Whanganui Community Arts Centre gallery, is the culmination of work by first, second and third-year students.

First-year UCOL Whanganui students Anita Hohaia, Misty Tutaki and Shayla Winchcombe are showing their large, three-panelled paintings at the Community Arts Centre gallery.

Winchcombe's painted work Fairy Land depicts a dancer with gossamer wings before a spectacular southern sunset.

"I saw that sunset down in Queenstown and the colours were amazing - I had to paint it," she said.

"The dancer sort of represents my desire to keep hold of those beloved fairy stories I've grown up with."

Tutaki has chosen horizontal rather than vertical panels for her work, and said they are representative of the landscapes of her whakapapa.

"They are about my nana and koro, my mother and father, and the places they are from," Tutaki said.

"My dad's maunga are the Tararua Ranges and I haven't spent much time there so I've layered the paint and used these pastel shades because I'm still finding out about the places where my whānau grew up."

Hohaia's work is inspired by her dancing experience and Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake.

"I trained at the Shirley McDouall School of Dance for a few years and the Swan Lake story has always captured my imagination," Hohaia said.

"I also had the film The Black Swan in mind while I was painting, although I have chosen to make my version red and I have given her a mischievous look."

Third-year fine arts students Jody Edmonds (left) and Jessica Kahukura with their work on show at Whanganui's Edith Gallery. Photo / Bevan Conley

Second-year students, who worked through Covid-19 lockdown restrictions during their first year, have been working with tutor Glen Hutchins to produce their recent works on show at the Community Arts Centre Gallery.

Their brief was to reformat salvaged materials and each student has sourced materials from Whanganui second-hand shops to produce a range of reimagined and repurposed artworks.

Caroline Smith's "landscape" is constructed from bed sheets deconstructed and reassembled into strips, suspended from a frame and woven into a mat where it reaches the floor.

Rowan Love's multimedia work was inspired by leaked surveillance footage of a flying object that is not a drone and includes the expletive uttered by the pilot who observed it.

Jacob Gay's series of works take recycled glossy print pages in a whole lot of new directions and Bowen Boswell has contemporised cassette covers from the 1980s with images of artists you might wish you had heard.

Cassidy Martell has reimagined art that focuses on the female form to take a fresh look at how male body parts are represented.

Second-hand three-dimensional objects have been given amusing makeovers and three miniature framed prints have been repainted as classics with distinctly masculine characteristics.

Across the road at the Edith Gallery, third-year students' work is on show with a mix of paintings, photographs, prints and sculptural works.

Jody Edmonds' large-scale painting on wood has an almost translucent quality.

"Jody was studying glass art before," senior lecturer Lorraine Webb said.

"I wasn't sure how she would be able to transition to painting but you can see she has now achieved this glass-like quality in her painting."

Interstice is showing at the Edith Gallery and Community Arts Centre Gallery on Taupō Quay on Friday 10am to 3pm, and Saturday 10am to 1pm.